When good books are translated, the translator matters a great deal, so here's a shout-out to my colleague Wolfgang Thon, who is recorded as having translated the book from American (Aus dem Amerikanischen) which is both amusing and accurate.

Why does this matter to me enough to come out of a long-term lurk? I can boil down the multitude of reasons into a single project, where I had the pleasure of going over a translation of Good Omens and putting all the jokes back in, because the combination of translator/publisher combo had managed to take all of them out, an error that was caught by a last revisor who panicked, then called me in for a labor of love on behalf of one of my favorite books, evah.

Yes, and when is the series going to become available in English again? I had to exert some effort to pick the Magewars series up (a great stroke of luck and a lot of rummaging at a large used book sale), but would have preferred buying it new, electronically.

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